Untangling Karma, Intimate Zen Stories on Healing Trauma is a book about accepting and healing our historic karma both on and off the meditation cushion. This is a journey of unraveling knots of isolation and hatred in order to become a more loving person.
As Buddhism teaches us, the personal and the systemic are tightly interwoven. If we are to heal from trauma, we each need to boldly face and unravel are deeply held and often hidden pain. This need for healing applies to everyone, no matter are ethnic or racial backgrounds, because we all have been raised in a society of greed, aggression and confusion of values.
In Untangling Karma, Judith Ragir takes off the burdensome mantle of the calm Zen teacher and shows what she has actually done to find more inner peace. The book examines the endeavor of transferring an Eastern philosphy onto a Western mind, and a male-inspired monastic model applied to an American woman, Jew and mother. It is at once a love-letter to Zen Buddhism and a critique of turn of the century American Zen.